Kumasi Court dismisses application of 3 assemblymen

A Kumasi High Court presided over by Justice Charles Adjei Wilson has dismissed an application filed by three assemblymen from the Sekyere East District challenging the election and confirmation of the President’s nominee, Ms Mary Boatemaa Marfo, as the District Chief Executive (DCE).

The court rejected the challenge filed by the applicants and described it as weak, and rather upheld the results of the election and declared Ms Marfo duly elected and confirmed as the DCE of the Sekyere East District.

Case

On April 20, 2017, one Francis Gyasi Boateng, an Assembly Member of the Sekyere East District, and two others filed a suit at a Kumasi High Court challenging the nomination and confirmation of the DCE, claiming that she failed to obtain the required number of votes to be confirmed as such.

Also attached to the suit was the Electoral Commission (EC) for supervising and illegality. Although the EC entered an appearance, it did not file any defence.

The applicants, therefore, pleaded with the court to declare the purported confirmation and swearing-in of the DCE as null and void.

It was the plaintiffs’ case that the then nominee needed 26 votes out of the 38 assembly members to be confirmed as the DCE, not the 25 votes that she got.

According to the plaintiffs, it was wrong for the EC to declare and certify the DCE to have been duly confirmed, an action which the plaintiffs claimed created considerable controversy.

District EC officer

A report on the election by the Sekyere East District Electoral Officer, Ms Cynthia Frimpong, admitted that she erroneously rounded up the two-thirds of the 38 members to 25 although the actual figure was 25.33.

According to her, a day after the election, an assembly member called her to draw her attention to the fact that the 25.33 should have been rounded up to the nearest whole number, which is 26.

“I, therefore, informed my bosses at the regional directorate of the anomaly, who confirmed same. My boss suggested that I should leave it at that since the results had already been declared,” she stated in her report.

The court

The court, however, maintained that the electoral clerks were human beings and could make mistakes and as such, “the court must not declare that a person has not been duly elected or declare an election void on grounds of omission or inadvertent mistake unless the fault that can be relied upon to invalidate the results of the election is tainted with fraud”.

According to the court, the plaintiffs did not allege any fraud other than the allegation that the nominee failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority.

“This is a matter of significant public concern to disqualify a DCE who has been in office for almost a year due to a marginal error or omission. There must be some judicial restraint.

“Whenever during the course of litigation and the relief sought or the question of enforcement between the two parties are no longer an issue, the case should be considered moot. If the issue before the court or an administrative body becomes moot any time during the course of the proceedings, the court’s response is to dismiss the action,” the judge stated.

Accordingly, he said, “the courts will not waste time to determine dead questions and issues.”